The Dale Jr. Download - Why NASCAR Doesn’t Need to Step in on Sawalich vs. Day

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Brake failures caused calamity at World Wide Technology Raceway this past weekend, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back with a new episode of Dirty Air to react. He joins co-host TJ Majors to unpack the cautions, the current point standings, and who is still in contention for the championship:Gateway’s pit road is challengingCorey Day and William Sawalich have another on-track incidentRace-winning crew chief Cliff Daniels joins the showA huge swing in temperature is leading to brake failureThis format is causing drivers to be more aggressiveWho is still in contention?During the Ask Jr. portion of the episode, listeners wrote in questions regarding:Proper etiquette for fans when their rival driver crashesHow Dale’s fantasy football and draft are goingCarson Hocevar signing autographs after the raceDale’s contributions to the NASCAR 26 soundtrackThe field letting Denny Hamlin off the hookThe shoving match at the CARS TourThe NASCAR swear jar Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. This is the most fun I've had in this chair in the last hour and a half. I don't know if we've ever argued. Did I piss you off over the weekend? I'm still sour. Did I want the best man at your wedding? Who was your best man, Dale? T.J.

You don't need a cool best for that race? What are you thinking? Get them, T.J. Hellway is starting a show. All right then. Hey, everybody. It's time again for another. episode of the Dell Jr. download here. It's Tuesday. We got Dirty Air and

TJ's here. How's it going, TJ? Travis. Thanks. It's going in the room. James. New haircut, James. It's looking good. Is that really a haircut? Elijah's in here. Y'all can't see everybody in here, but there's five people in the room. This episode is presented by Arby's. Don't forget about Arby's new meat three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. That's Harvey's slogan. And we got a lot to get into. We had the cars tour this weekend at Tri-County. It was rained out and delayed until Sunday afternoon.

Brody Montague grabs the win and the pros. We had a wild battle between Connor Jones and T.J. DeKare. It spilled over into the pits after the race, lots of frustration. But what I saw, the racetrack was kind of right up to the limit of aggression without actually going over. That's as much, I think, as we want to see. But I don't think the guys really did anything that warranted all of the anger and frustration after the race.

But, you know, guys get heated and competitive. Both drivers used each other up a lot, but both got to finish in the top three and didn't end up on the back of the record. The points in the pro late models are wildly exciting. Mason Walter is holding on to a slim six-point lead over Connor Jones. And in third is a surging Brody Monaghan who's won a few races here lately. he's only 10 back from the lead. 86 drivers have attempted starts this year in the series, TJ. Is that a high number?

I think so. 86 drivers is a lot. That is a lot. That is an exciting race. I thought, like you said, the racing this weekend was to the limit, probably a little more for one than the other, they thought, but disagreement there, but good race. In a late model stock race, Connor Jones would get some version of redemption

and grab a needed win ahead of Carson Lofton and Caden, Quaple. Quaple had the good fortune of starting on the pole because qualifying was rained out. He turned the track position into a top three. Qualifying's been Caden's weakness. He's not, we have not qualified. I say we. Junior motor sports, Caden, Quaple, has not qualified well, usually around 8th to 13th or so.

But with the qualifying rained out, him being the points leader, he starts up front, he gets a third police finish. Connor Jones is 50 points back from Quaple in the points situation with only two races left. So not a lot of races left. Not a great chance for Connor Jones to be able to win out and try to get this championship. But, yeah, if Caden Quaple just kind of does what he needs to do the last two races, he should come away with the championship. Trayton Lapsovich had a great run

foiled by a flat tire, right front tire went flat with just a few laps remaining in the race. 94 drivers have attempted a start in the late model stock series this year. That's a lot. The next big race for late model competitors is the Martinsville 300. That's up on the 26th of this month. And the next cars tour race is at Newport, Tennessee. I'm racing in that.

That's October 3rd. I'll be running with the late model stocks. That's going to be a wild one. It's very high-banked, really small track, 13 second laps. I predict we're going to tear a ton of shit. So I hope we don't. But I just feel like it's going to be a pretty rough race.

Hopefully it isn't. The final event of the season is at South Boston on October the 17th, and then the season will be over with. Every week, a team in the pro and the late model stock gets a free set of tires thanks to keen parts or Corvette parts. So we're very thankful for that. And we'll move on to the NASCAR action this weekend at St. Louis. All right, it's time to get into some NASCAR coverage here with our Dirty Air segment.

This week's Dirty Air segment is brought to you by Bass Pro Shops, North America's premier outdoor and conservation company. Plan your next adventure at a Bass Pro Shops near you. You can also shop online at BassPro.com. I have the app on my phone. And it's badass. You know why I love the app? Check this shit out.

I go on the app. And I can buy whatever I want, right? You can shop in that, obviously. And I can also go to my club card and see that I have $2,812 in club points. Literally, I have $2,800 that I can go into Bass Pro and spend. They have given me $2,800. I have the Johnny Morris Bass Pro Shop's Club card. Amy has one as well, which she's pretty damn hot,

and that makes you even extra hot. Right? She has a Bass Pro card. Her credit card is not a gold card. It's a Bass Pro card. And so we connect that thing to everything. If it's a $5 subscription on our iPhone, if it's streaming subscriptions,

if it's a bill, hotel, everything is connected to those cards. And so I'm churning up these points. And man, when it's time to go to Bass Pro, I feel like I'm just shopping spree. And they have just opened the doors and I'm just going in there

and just grabbing whatever I want. This could be you if you get yourself a Bass Pro club card. We're going to go to the O'Reilly series but before we do, pretty incredible what happened in the cup race.

A lot of crashing. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk a lot about the chase. and all the things that developed in terms of the points and where Denny Hamelin and other drivers are. But in the O'Reilly race, T.J., you know, we had a big crash on pit road, something that I don't want to say I've never seen that before, but I can't remember ever seeing that before.

I've seen the track blocked at Richmond. Back when we had the old fairgrounds, they'd have cars wrecked on the front straightaway. Mike Porter wrecked in the early 80s and he bounced off the inside wall the outside wall, the inside wall and blocked the racetrack. That's happened at Richmond multiple times

on the front straightaway in the 70s and 80s. I've seen that. Before they reconfigured the track. I've seen tracks get blocked. Yes. Well. Martinsville track got blocked in your race there

at one time. Yeah. That won't because we drove through the wreck. That's right. Yeah. But I have watched the replay of this accident on pit road over and over and over. and I really can't say that I can see exactly one thing

that was responsible for all of it. It was like a series of different decisions that different drivers made or didn't make. That's sort of like the 18th, the 18's got to get around. Back it up again. Yeah, the 18 of Swalich is trying to get into his pitfall. And he has to drive around. None of these views are great.

They're all shit. We don't really get a good look at this. There is one that starts a little bit earlier. I don't know if we're going to get it on the TV right now. Yeah, probably not. All of this is garbage. Like, I can't tell what's going on. You're skipping around.

Are you skipping around there? You're doing that. Okay. That's frustrating. Go back, yeah, a little bit. There's not one. Right here. So what happened? I don't see anything.

Okay, so it starts. To me, the 18 has to, he kind of, starts to turn, then he has to stop a little bit. It's not much. No, it ain't. The 18 kind of slowed down a little bit to get into his box. He started to turn, then stopped a little bit, in my opinion. If we can back that one up.

Back that one up. Right here. This is it, right here. Right here. The orange hood. That's a, that's a terrible view. Go back to the other view that we just saw. Stop.

Stop it. So I think the 17 is the first stall. He gets in, look how far out these guys are. trying to change the tires. This is a very, very narrow pit road. It is, yeah. The guys aren't far out. It's just that they're so close to the oncoming traffic.

With all of that going on, you see other guys also in box two, three, four, whatever, they're all coming out into their pit stalls. That's like 43. Yep, because there's cars coming into those stalls. So they're coming out. So Swalich is just trying to be careful. He's slowing down,

into his box. You also see the 19 peeling off a little bit because he's also coming into his box. So there's two cars. Well, if you want to count the 17, there's three cars in the top 10 that are pitting in one of the first eight or six stalls. So there's a lot of cars like slowing down early on pit road, unusually early on pit road to get into their stalls. And that sort of creates a chain reaction back here in the field. These guys aren't ready to slow down. They feel like they're going to enter pit road and continue at that pace as they traditionally do.

But you've got three cars in the first top positions that are going to get into their stalls early and create a bit of a slowdown that no one was prepared for. And so it was just a perfect storm. I can't say that I put responsibility on anybody. The one thing I'm really thankful for, and I know we all are, is that no one was injured. I think, you know, the cars get spun around into some of the JGR pit crew members. Yeah, Brian Backis got close. That was...

Very close. That could have been awful. I was present at Atlanta Motor Speedway way back in the day when someone was killed on pit road. And you see right there it was very similar to that accident right there that cost the life of a crew member or tire changer on Bill Elliott's crew in Atlanta when Ricky Rudd spun in. to his car. So to me, that's what starts it. You can't, the, so Walsh goes to turn in and then has to stop turning in and that jams everyone. I mean, it was just a busy pit road. It wasn't like it was this pit road is super narrow. Yeah, it's like Indy. We had a lot of drivers talk about how difficult this pit road is. Should NASCAR, should the track, should, should something be done? Can something

be done? So go back to that video, Travis. I was wondering if you could take where the pit wall starts and just move it out another car length, make the front straightaway a little bit more narrower, three quarters of a car length, move the wall to the left a little bit here and just kind of continue. Make the racetrack more narrow. A little bit because wouldn't it be really run down there, but. Yeah. Okay.

I don't hate that. I'm sure that might be a little cheaper than actually moving pit wall. If you're moving pit wall, you're moving all of those lights, you're moving. There's a lot. I would say the track, if they were actually going to physically change anything, they would go the most economical. route, which may be that front straightaway. I mean, is 8 feet, 10 feet too much right there?

You know what I mean? I just don't know whether they want to spend money. I don't know. That's a million dollars. Honestly, does it... I would say moving that wall, that front straightaway wall is... By the time it's all said, does it really... It'll be costly.

Does it really need it? Yes. It does? If money's the reason, like, we're talking about safety, we always talk about safety, safety, Yeah. I mean, is a million dollars worth of life? Yeah. But I mean, the wreck could still happen just like a car could still get spun out. No, but I think we need to, if you, we're getting close to something here. Listen, is this the most narrow, most difficult pit road on pit road on NASCAR? It isn't. I don't think. I think Dover's challenging. Dover. I mean, Dover is very similar.

Dover is very similar. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's other pit roads that are probably somewhat similar to this in, in shape. size and different... I mean, Martinsville's arguably worse than this. Maybe, yeah. So, yeah, Martin'sville's tight. So let's not go overboard and overreact and say,

man, it has to change. We can't go, you know, we have to change something. They could look at it. Is this, again, I'm telling you, this is kind of the perfect storm. You had three cars. You had three cars into top ten

peeling off early into stalls. A lot of check up there. The rest of the field behind them is not thinking we're going to have a checkup as soon as we get to the stalls, we're going to say, They're not thinking that. They're thinking we're going to have this steady cruise down pit road.

So I will say that's become more of an emphasis on even in what I'm looking. When we're coming down pit road, you told me one of the first races I ever spotted for you was that you like to know where the car in front of you is going, just so you have an idea. But we're even a step further than that now. Got to tell you more information. I'm counting the gap in front because you don't want to run that guy over in front of you. And if he's got to slow down, you're actually spotting like a plate race. you're spotting off the car in front sometimes down pit road.

All right. Later in the race, we had an accident between Swalich and Corey Day. You got to lose. If you look at, you know, if you remember everybody that watched at Darlington, these two were talking after the race. Swalich was upset at Corey Day. Hey, man, you freaking, you know, you're going to get it. I'm going to wreck you.

Corey Day said that Swalich had some pretty tough words. So you know there's a history there and they're not happy. This was just last week at Darlington. We go into this race. If you watch getting down into term one, Corey Day gets down in the corner, gets loose up the racetrack into the side of Swalich. Same thing happened in Darlington.

Yeah. And then as they are exiting turn two, Justin Algar, a few other cars are now packed up into the back bumper of Corey Day and pushing him on corner exit. And he continues to hit Swalich. Now, that part, Corey Day has not much control over, but he's already got into Swalich in the middle of the corner. So I want to talk about Swalich is in the outside groove, right?

You know this guy, Corey Day, is on your inside getting into turn one, and you told him that you don't want no more shit, right? You don't want no more, you want to wreck him. You're mad at him because he's been driving. You're like, shi-and-you-and-you-want-you-want. And you want him to stop. Get down in the corner, and he slides up and gets loose. underneath you and doors you.

Swalich's thought right there is wrap the corner you're underneath me, hold your phone line, don't hit me, right? And so, Cori Day gets loose, doors him, and Swalach sees red. Now they're coming up off of turn two,

and Swalich is driving his car, and he continues to get hit. He doesn't know who's pushing the 17. At that point, he doesn't care. He's hit me in the middle of the corner, and now he's hitting me more, and he snapped. Swalich swerves, doors him,

down the back straight away. Does the 17 wreck? Right there. 17 doesn't wreck. Off that initial hit. Off that initial hit. Yeah, I agree. He only gets wrecked

because the seven happened to be in his path as he's trying to correct his car. And unfortunate for Algar, it ruined an opportunity that he had at a top five or a top ten finish. He got heavy right front damage. I was upset about that. But what I saw Swalich do happens a lot.

Guys, door guys all the time. That was a very egregious and very severe doering. It actually hurt Swalich's car pretty bad. He had a tire rub. That's taking it to the limit in terms of aggression, trying to door a guy going down a straightaway. But guys do that. You door people under caution, whatever.

You're mad. You're going to go up there. you're going to show them you're mad sometimes camera catches it a lot of times the camera does it catch it yeah a lot of times it don't no so a lot of people are calling for swallich to be parked after this race or be suspended by nascar it's not even close to a suspension in my opinion um yeah that right there is unfortunate for day it's terrible luck for his championship hopes because he's got a ton of talent and he's got plenty of race car to go up there and try to win this championship. And he still might. A lot of racing left. But,

look, Swalich warned him. And I would say that Swalich has nothing to lose. And that's not the kind of guy you want to, you know, I think if your day, you take a little extra care after what he said to you on Pitt Road after Darlington, you take a little extra care and he didn't. You know, you take a little extra care not to ruffle feathers with this guy. I don't give him a reason to snap. And so... Yeah, I mean, we saw like, Carson seemed like he was racing around Braddle.

Like he was trying not to do anything. Hosevar? Yeah. And the cup race. Hosevar played really nice on Sunday. Yeah. I didn't even think twice about it, honestly. That's what I'm saying, though.

We were coordinating resarts and stuff together. Yeah. A lot of that sort of after a week, a lot of the ruffled feathers in the cup series, those guys calm down. They're professional. They're going to not do anything like this. Yeah.

But we see this a lot in the truck series. we see this a lot in the O'Reilly series and it's because we have these young guys that are sort of learning how to blow off some seam, learning how to check themselves, learning how to make these mistakes. Look, I bet you, I would say that if these guys were to run this race again

and the same situation were to happen again, I don't know if Swalett doors him. He probably realizes after the fact that was a pretty stupid move on my part. I damaged my car, even though I may have sent, I may have sent my message and got my message across to Corey Day, but also damaged my car,

and I bet my team had a problem with that. I bet my guy said, hey, I'd like you standing up for yourself, but you can't cost yourself a good result here. He had a heavy tire rub after that contact. One of the thing that some people brought up is you, this incident impacted another chase driver's season. Does NASCAR need to handle this? Listen, no.

No. I'm sorry. Listen, you're a chase driver. that's something that I think we need to be careful with. In NASCAR it is unique that we have a group of people that are racing for a championship and you're going to call them chase drivers, I will too, and then you have another group of people that aren't. We're all on the same racetrack together,

and those guys that aren't in the chase have as much right to race, to win, to race hard, to be aggressive, to do everything that they would have done in race one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all the way through the year. I'm sorry, if you get taken out, and this could happen to junior motorsports tomorrow. If you get knocked out by a f***, non-chaise guy, that's the risk you take when you sign up to put your entry into the f***ice. We're all on, we're everybody, there's no like, we're not going to, like. They don't have to get different treatment.

Yeah, we're not going to treat these chase guys differently. I agree. And punish the non-chase guys. They're already punished. They didn't make the chase, right? And they're mad about it. And they're frustrated that their season didn't go the way it should go. I would probably give the non-chaise guy a little more room.

He's not to be f*** with. And there were comments last week about, oh, well, he's not. There was comments last week about, well, he's not in the chase, like a chase guy and or not chase guy. Like, it doesn't matter. Everyone's still racing to win the race. Non-chase guys. You're talking about Brad and how he race is what you're referring to. I'm saying, like, there was comments made that said, you know, that Brad wasn't in the chase.

so taking out a chase guy. Non-chase guys don't want to be treated as second class. It's almost worse. Right? They don't want to be thought of as not, you know. And so is less than, right? And so they're probably the guys to be, not to be messed with as opposed to like chase guys, they got shit-lose.

They're going to be trying to, well, we thought they're going to try to race smart. Some of them didn't someday. But, you know, the non-chase guys are more dangerous even now in this. system because it's um they they're they're frustrated they're mad so these are some of the things that that race craft comes into play early in the year and throughout the year yeah you race guys and with respect a little bit of give and take because if your ear don't goes planned and there's is you know you don't yeah you want if i'm a non chase guy and i've if i'm a non chase guy right and there's a guy that's in the chase that drove me like a year you're racing the

that's exactly but your big big brain in it if you're early in the year if you're letting it go yeah you're letting go like making it easy on yourself i like that all right so um junior murder sports struggled again to get the results that they wanted to get we saw the seven car of justin algar with the right front damage they did have great stages similar to darlington great stage results but not the good final result that we want um not quite sure what's going on there why our cars kind of aren't as good as they need to be in the final stage as opposed to stage one and two. But it's kept this point situation in the Raleigh

series relatively close. So Sheldon Creed is now leading the points over Justin Algar. It's crazy. And Carson Quappell is only nine points back. Jesse Love is 16 points back. Those four guys have separated themselves from the rest of the field. You got Sam Mayor Austin Hill at 61 back from the leader in Sammy Smith, 64. Corey Day, now 69.

after the crash. They're not out of it. We saw in the Cup series, Kyle Larson, a win, gained 40 points on Denny Hamlin. So think about that. Jesse Love, hit with his win, gained 32 points to the leader.

So a big weekend can throw your ass right back into this thing. Yeah, consistency. You've got to be consistent. I know, and I'm loving it. If you get a 70-point day. Dude, I'm loving it. I'm loving this point system. It is thrilling.

And we're going to talk more about that as we go into the cup action. It's going to become more important every week. And I think it's about time to move on to the cup here. The Air and our family has always trusted Bass Pro Shops for our outdoor adventures, and that's something that hasn't changed even today. I grew up shopping there, and now I enjoy bringing my family along as we gear up for our time in the outdoors together. That's also why I'm proud to partner with Johnny Morris and Bass Pro Shop. They're tremendous supporters of conservation and the outdoor traditions that bring families together.

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He's on a plane coming home. So Cliff, the winning crew chief is going to call in to be able to talk to us, and we've got questions for him. I'm hoping you guys are ready. but basically the big story from Sunday was the wrecks, a lot of crashing, a lot of cautions, a lot of brake failures that drew a lot of yellows. Drivers lost their minds,

and we are all going to sit here and sort of debate on why we think that happened. I think there's a lot of different things that are going to play into that answer. And we'll ask Cliff. One of the things that I thought was interesting, though, I saw a couple of different points. Denny Hamlin turns 46 November 18th. The oldest driver to win a cup championship is Bobby Allison at 45 years old in 11 months. Lee Petty won it twice in 58 and 59 at 45 and 44 years old,

and my dad in 1994 was a champion at 43 years old. So if Denny Hamlin wins the championship, oldest ever. He would be the oldest. When's the last race? November Second week in November So if he wins

Yeah he's in November Is he November? Is he older than Bobby? He turns 46 on 18th It's no The championship's on the 8th Of November So 10 days short

And Bobby was 11 months 17 days So Denny would be the oldest By three days Three days or so Wow Be a heck of win you first I mean That's a hell of an accomplishment

though, to do it as the oldest in the history of NASCAR ever. Yeah. Hell of the thing. And the other thing I wanted to do, I was going to save this to the end of the show. I want to give a shout out to Denny Hamelin also for his 750th cup start this weekend at Bristol. I give NASCAR a hard time, their social media team for celebrating drivers who are having their 100 start, their 30th start, their 15th start, their 200th. start, their 300 start. Those are not numbers that really warrant any kind of notoriety or recognition. What about 500?

500 is a nice number. Ricky Stenhouse had it this weekend. All right. I would celebrate 500. That is some shi-hundred. 750 cup starts for Denny Hamlin. Only 15 drivers have hit that mark. Fifteen drivers. Think about all of the drivers that have raced in this whole industry since the 40s. Denny Hamlin is one of 15 that'll make 750 starts.

That is badass. That's a lot. Yes. So shout out to Denny for his longevity. And being competitive too. There is not many, if any, of those 15 that were still flippers at that number. That's what I was thinking.

There may be one or two. I don't even know the list of the 15. But that's also his ability to still be not just a potential winner, right? Not a guy that might win a race or two a year. Yeah. He's literally like a favorite a lot. A favorite every week. He's won four and he hasn't won in a while and people are like,

Yeah. What's wrong? I don't think I've started that conversation just yet. I think you give, I'm not saying you, but yeah. I'm just, that's the first time I'm here. Yeah. You got to give J.GR credit though for being the competitor that long because he's been in really good cars his whole career.

So that's, you can give him the credit, TJ. Good job. It's a good mix. Yes, sir. Well, one of the things that we want to talk about when Cliff gets on, obviously, is the break issues. Blaney had issues, Chase Elliott, Noah, Zane Smith. Zane Smith's... Ouchy.

Hit. Yeah. That's... That scares me, man. It scares me. That is a nasty hit. We've got to get to the bottom of this. We need to certainly listen to Cliff and what he may say about it.

But is it time for NASCAR to maybe kind of step in and try to help. figure out how we can avoid some of this. I have said on this show, I know that I've said on this show that I, I, I, I want parts to fail. I want, I really want engines to be more or less durable. I want, I want you to need to make sure, you know, I want you to, I mean, I want things, listen, it's not fun for me if the car is indestructible. No, I, I agree, but you can't, like, say you want to, You can't say you want to fix all the breaks. Listen.

All right. Listen to my point. All right. I don't like, you know, we have guys that have break failures getting down into turn one at Pocono. And those are hits that a lot of these guys have a hard time getting over. And so, you know, you see Zane Smith hit the wall like he hits and you just kind of, I think it's a concern. And it's something I think we need to figure out how to, um, how to mitigate out of the series.

Cliff Daniels is on. Thank you, Cliff, for joining us today. We just started our conversation around the cup race this past weekend. A lot of things going on. Kind of wanted to get your take on it. I, as a broadcaster, we went to Nashville. We went to a couple of different racetracks and breaks were a topic of conversation. We, as broadcasters, wonder if we're making a big deal out of us.

it, but then you start seeing the issues in the race with a couple of different teams. And in a place like Nashville, for example, it just seemed like one or two cars maybe went to an extreme setup. Not everybody in the field was having issues. Now, it seems like St. Louis presents maybe the worst case scenario in terms of this, you know, what we can do with brakes, how brakes can be considered and how we approach breaks. We had more cars having issues. we had more different manufacturers having issues.

And so I ask you, is this something that maybe we, you know, NASCAR can keep their hands off of and the teams can sort out over time? Is this, are you concerned that y'all don't have enough information to know how to avoid it? Or is it, or do you believe that just the teams will figure it out? and if we just stay the course, no action needed, we'll go to the racetrack and have less issues. Certainly a lot to unpack with the whole conversation. So I'm going to hit you with a couple of different angles, but I think it's all important points to make. Where we are now, and the tough part of it is I think you've illustrated really well, the history of break issues that we've had from Nashville, of course, Gateway in the past.

I think one or two of the tracks we've seen it here and there. You know, it's a safety concern for the drivers. It's a safety concern even beyond that of parts and debris, getting kicked up into the grandstand. So it is absolutely a safety concern from multiple different angles that, yeah, I think we have to take a good look at. Then if you go off of just the history of NASCAR and how they've responded to safety concerns always, from updates to the next gen car, you know, after our. our big hit at Talladega with priests years ago, other things they've done. I think they've always responded really well in those situations. So what I will tell you is now, even after the race, some of the guys at NASCAR came up to

me, hey, what do you think? Where do we need to go with this? I think they're trying to do the best that they can to understand exactly what you're asking. Is this a team side thing? Is this something we need to get involved in? And I think my answer would be multiple different levels. I do think that there's some evolution of where we are with the parts and pieces from a break-duck versatility aspect from potentially how we're conditioning and just what we can push AP to do on the rotor side of things. because they're open to, you know, kind of exploring some technology that they could put into effect to helping the rotor conditioning.

Even I've heard kicked around going to carbon brakes, which a lot of other racing series on the world uses. There's a whole other layer of cost and expense, you know, that comes with carbon brakes, of course, but they're durable and they last longer. And then another piece, too, that they could be even more short term. and I had mentioned this directly to some of the guys at NASCAR post race for a long time in the Cup Series when we would have practice events and Dale, you know this as well as anybody at short tracks. And I'm talking pre-COVID, just a normal NASCAR weekend. You'd show up on Friday, you'd practice Friday morning, you qualify Friday night,

you'd have happy hour. Well, you'd have a morning practice Saturday. You'd have happy hour Saturday afternoon. It was normal that you would just completely put on brand new breaks everything from Saturday night going into Sunday to start the race. So now that, you know, our series has evolved to these impound-style weekends, you know, you unload, you get for a while we're only getting 25 minutes of practice. Now we get 50 minutes of practice, which I'm an advocate for.

I think we should be practicing more. It's a lot more to showcase for the fans, gives us more time to work on the cars. When we go to these type tracks and we have a longer 50-minute practice, which we want and we love, that's that much more duty cycle on the brakes. How do we allow in these impound style weekends where we're very, let's just say, limited on the amount of changes that we can make? How do we open it up? So, hey, SOP, normal operating procedure when you're at all the short tracks plus these, you know, mileage tracks that are very high breaking tracks, let the teams change, brake pads, break rotors, like for like, going.

into the race. That could be a short-term fix while we're looking at the longer-term solutions with, you know, kind of what I'm talking about on the AP side of what they can do. And it sounds like they have some ideas or even as far as carbon breaks. That's probably a bit farther out in the future. Yeah. I love the, I love that the cars aren't bulletproof. But, yeah, there's a balance between having to take care of equipment, be a smart driver.

and seeing these vicious hits when the brakes fail at some of these tracks with these long straightaways. Yeah, and to your point, and I guess I would add, like when you're asking if the team's can, you know, manage it on our own, like they're, in the case of this weekend, that any of the differences between the four-hitter cars were incredibly small and incredibly subtle, that just that margin is so close for us of, you know, do. Do you have what you need for the driver feel, the balance, the grip, the cooling aspect, and the way that whole formula kind of comes together, it ends up being a very small margin? But you mentioned, I think you brought up on the radio to Kyle about the nine having a different setup or packaged than what you guys ran. So teams are doing different things, though, for different feel, like you said, though, creating some of these problems, correct? To be very clear, what I was describing over the radio, and I was hesitant to just completely call it out at the time, was really just small only in the aspect of cooling. And here's what's really odd. So pad for pad, setup for setup, we were super close just on everything that was in the core of the break package build.

The nine actually had more break opening than we did. Yeah. So when I was calling that out to Kyle, it was more of, hey, there's a little bit more cooling to that. And I don't know that we have enough information at this point to say that more cooling is what led to their problem. But when we've seen issues arise, and especially with, you know, some of the Nashville failures that happen, the Nashville failures, I would argue they had too much cooling. And so, okay, hold on.

How can having too much cooling present an issue? Yeah. Well, you're just really increasing the thermal cycle that the brake will go through around the lap. And when we've, I say, been conservative, when I have been conservative on brakes, I'm actually conservatives of keeping them very hot. And you're almost aggressive to cool them too much. Well, that's kind of a weird, unconventional way of looking at it. You know, cars of old, like, hey, you have a break problem. Okay, you just need to cool the brakes more.

and now we just have this big, you know, temperature swing. When you get more cooling, which comes from a lot of different aspects, these rotors are bigger. The veins are wider. They pump a lot more air than what we used to do. And then another element that maybe gets overlooked at times, these wheels, the wheels that we have now have so much more opening. And they almost act like a paddle wheel of pumping air that the five-lug wheel, you know, the Basset era wheels, they have such small openings that the wheel itself, coupled with the rotor itself, just don't pump as much air to cool like we have on the next shit in car.

So a lot of things to pick apart there. Again, for us in nine this weekend, the only thing to suck out on paper is they have a little more. Like that's why. You're talking 100 degrees, right? On one straight away, you're talking hundreds of degrees of hot to cool every twice a lap. Right? Like just for people to know, like you're talking huge. swings and temperatures really quick.

Yes. Yeah, I would say max peak break pressure corner entry there. You're anywhere from 1,200 degrees to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. And then at the end of the straightaway, you're probably, you know, high, 7, low 8. And so that's just a huge thermal cycle of the max heating. And then you have these long straightaways where you've gone from 140 miles an hour up 280 miles an hour of just cooling, you know, the whole length of straightaway. Yeah. It's so fascinating when I was walking around in the garage this summer,

seeing, knowing that we were going into a racetrack where teams were going to hope that they didn't have break issues, we were going to go to a racetrack where breaks could be a concern, and you'd walk through the garage, and you'd have guys wide open on the grill, guys completely solid on the grill, people in the middle, and you're thinking, wow, somebody's got this right and somebody's got this wrong. and the nervous energy as the race begins is it's there. But thanks for describing that to us. You talk about the veins and the rotors. There's pieces that you guys can put in to kind of slow that down

or control how much air. There's so many components in your hands that you're responsible for. It's so fascinating the role you have to kind of make sure that you've nailed to your point, a good package that's going to survive, but also give the driver the exact feel that he needs. And it's going to be fun to kind of follow this as it continues to develop. As we're getting into the chase, it's great to have you on as opposed to Kyle to be able to ask you a couple questions about transparency. You have a four-car team.

Everybody's trying to go out there and have great success, whether you're in the chase or not in the chase. You all want to run as well as you possibly can and be a great asset to each other. But at the same time, you know if everything is. goes well, you're going to be racing each other for the championship. How do you manage, or how does a company manage, the sharing of information? The, you know, the company line or the easiest thing to say is we're wide open, everybody sees everything.

But I know, even as an owner, that when it whittles down to those final few races, things get a little tighter. Maybe there's less conversation, you know, maybe there's, you know, there's always, you know, the meeting starts and everybody talks and the meeting ends, but those conversations after the meeting, walking down the hall, those, you know, stepping into somebody's office and picking their brain for a moment about this or that and the other, those things slow way down. So how do you kind of manage the relationships and information sharing in such a competitive atmosphere? So I'm going to come at this at a place that I think you know and you're familiar

with. Obviously, your time here at Hendrick, you know, predated mine a bit, but I came in in in 2014, and the shops were still split at that point. You know exactly what that looked like, what that felt like. And there was the division of information share and how all that went. You know, there were certain things that you would share. You would have, you know, kind of a basic setup sheet and a basic car build. But some of the more particular items were kept, you know, between the shops and then even at times in between the teams. So I think it was 2017 that the first.

shops got combined, that was a big step forward of kind of us, you know, sharing all those things from set up sheets to car builds. And then the other really interesting angle that I think we now do very well is just with the nation era, it has presented so much higher of a need for all of us to be fully open of, you know, anything from our brake package builds and how we're going to cool the brakes to, you know, to car. setups and air pressures and car builds, coupled with the fact that, you know, newsflash, it's been a really tough year for Hendrit this year, right? We've had to lean so much more into each other and just putting, you know, all of the collective intelligence, the experience, everything that we can together to dig out of the performance hole that we've been in, that we're as close now as we've ever been. And you hear that, right, as a talking point from from Hendrick, you hear, you know, Jeff Andrews, Jeff Gordon, Chad, Mr. Hendrude talked about that.

Yeah, we're as close as we've ever been. But I'm telling you that from conversations we have during the week to even conversations during the weekend, Alan, Rudy, Blake, and myself, there really isn't anything that gets stowed away that we don't know about. Last night, it was a late night last night. I think last night at 10 o'clock, I was writing my car detail list for for Bristol, for Kansas. And when I email that out, that gets shared to other engineers on other teams that are helping us all kind of create what we want for a target car build, aerobalance, things that we're looking for. And I'm coming at that from a place of just needing help in wanting to, you know, expand all of the collective intelligence that we have. Hey, here's what I

think the vision for the five car build for Bristol should be and for, you know, Kansas should be. what do you guys think? What's your approach? What do you guys think are moves that make sense to stack up for aerobalance at this track versus another track? And putting all of that together has been really important for us this year to lean in to one another and to share that difference of opinion or perspective. It doesn't mean that all of our cars are built the same, but it means that at least we're being very transparent with the idea for an approach. And of course, those little things that you have to put together. together to execute it. If there's anything that we're working in a world of black and white, are we working in the gray or some of these just, you know, very fundamental items that you would build into your car for the weekend. Having that be presented on the front side just helps everyone see that much more clearly what their approach can be. And Kyle likes a certain field, a certain track is compared to Chase. So you know there's going to be inherent differences in that. But yeah, the communication is great.

And I guess to the next part of your point of, okay, that's cool for now. You guys have been digging through the performance deficit you've been at. Now what about, you know, when it gets down to being time in the final five races, final two races, final race, final race, I think we continue where we are because we have helped each other so much stick together to build out of this hole that if I'm going to be racing, let's just say, you know, the three of our chase cars, if I'm going to be racing Rudy and Allen going into Homestead, I'm still going to want their help.

And I think they're still going to want my help to know that we're maximizing everything that we can to go compete against those guys that have been fast and they've been tough all year. I just don't see a way out of that without the help from those guys as well. And I'm sure they share the thought as well. So it's a different page than probably what you've seen of Hendrick in the past. but it's a really healthy page, and there's a very high level of transparency. With the win this past weekend, you guys gained 40 points on the points leader,

Denny Hamlin, came into the Chase 55 out. I feel like, you know, going into Bristol, you guys have to have a lot of confidence. You had a couple of great stages last year, or earlier this year, I think. So you know that there's a potential. to go out there and gobble up points throughout the race. How did that race, you know, you're surely thinking about last, you know, the earlier Bristol's result, how that race may have got out of your hands or out of your control. What's the approach this weekend?

How important, you know, you're, I don't think that we've actually been to a legit mile and a half to understand truly where you guys are comparable to Toyota. We're going to get that in a couple of weeks. but we're going to Bristol where you know you can win, you know you can gobble up a lot of points, have a big points day. How much pressure do you think you put on yourself to go maximize and execute this weekend,

not knowing what Kansas and Charlotte and those places may look like for y'all? We put a lot of pressure on ourselves every week, and I think you know that, but for all the reasons that you just described, we do put that much extra pressure on Bristol, just because Kyle is so good there, he just has such a natural knack for that place, any car that he gets in, whether it's one of your cars on a Friday or Saturday night or one of our cars on a Sunday, like he's so fast and he's so good. And then you bring up a good point that, you know, in the spring, we had strength, you know, at times of the race, we let a bunch of laps.

Certainly at the end of the race, I think that 12 and the 54 were probably both better than we were. and we have evolved a lot just in what we know of ourselves and how to tune, you know, the body that we have this year, how to improve our setups this year. So we're pretty deep in the weeds right now of picking through. What are the important things to carry forward that's kind of a home baseline for, you know, the five-card Bristol, which we've had for a while, you know, the last handful of years that we've been running up front at Bristol. We've kept a very solid, consistent baseline. What are the right things to apply that we know that we've learned throughout the year that have helped get our performance back more in the game? How do you apply those things?

And then how do you address the specific balanced efficiencies that we had kind of at the end of the race in the spring and try to just get the setup dialed in a little bit better? Another small question mark. I don't think it's a big question mark, but small one. is what are the temps going to do for the track and tire response? I don't think we're going to have a powder, you know, tire race. I don't think that's going to happen. But it's kind of sitting off, you know, in the background of, okay, well, what would that look like?

And what would those changes need to be built into our baseline or how do you respond to that as the weekend moves along? So a lot to put together for the approach this weekend. And our team has been really deep in doing that. Kyle was in the sim a week ago. He's going to be in the sim again this week. He's really leaned into to being more of a sim guy this year, which hasn't been his style in the past. But he's enjoying it.

He's done a good job, and it's helped us. It's helped iron out a few car build details just with steering and brakes. Hell, yeah. It's helped us find two of the setups a little bit. So we're geared up to go have a good sim session, hopefully tomorrow, and keep jipping away at it. And to your point, we just don't know what that string, I think it's Kansas Vegas, Charlotte.

We don't know what that's going to look like. We know the Toyotas have been sitting on a lot of speed, and we've just got to be very smart of putting a good baseline out there, applying the things that we've been learning to make us better, and it still just comes down to execution like you know. Because even though we had a great points day in Gateway, super happy about that and grateful for that, I think the illustration is very clear there that it can flip it.

hurry. And there's guys that had bad days at Gateway that you didn't expect to have bad days because of the crashes or the break failures. Man, that's just where we are in this season of the chase. I almost think the previous style may have been easier isn't the right word, but may have been less pressure at times. Because when and you're in, if you get locked into the next round, like, okay, well, we can just go focus on the next trio of races and, you know, kind of forecast your thoughts ahead. Now every week is such a big deal. Every stage point matters. Every little thing can just build and carry with you for so long that it's fun. It's a whole different type of pressure that we have now, not only for our life and our journey, but just kind of looking at the way the format is.

It's cool. I like it. I do too. Man, I'm so thankful for your time. I got to say, every time that I need to talk to a crew chief, I'm a little hesitant like Steve LaTart can walk into any hauler and go up and just bang out a conversation. And I'm an old driver and I'm a little hesitant, but I can always go to Cliff and get the answer I'm looking for. And he's always great with his time. And you were again today. Thank you so much. I know you got a lot on your plate, but you sat down with us and gave us articulated so much great information. Congratulations on the win. I appreciate you. Good luck going into Bristol. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having. You always want to be on here. Don't hesitate, man. Come stop.

Yeah, I don't worry about you, man. You're always great. Thank you. See you, man. All good, man. Thanks. Yeah. You know, that was awesome.

We got to talk about breaks and a lot of other things. One of the things we haven't really covered yet was just the wrecking, a lot of aggression. I wanted to sort of dive into that just a minute. I had some opinions about what I think it is. I actually called a couple of drivers to talk to them. Honestly, the answer that I got from them was they weren't sure. But they did tack on a few ideas. about why they feel like that gateways sort of got out of control

in terms of some of the decisions the drivers made. One of the things was, obviously, with the next-gen car, it's difficult to pass. The trailing car is really at a deficit in dirty air, and so on restarts, you really have to send it in. You either take advantage of the opportunity to make a pass or you get taken advantage of. There is no middle ground.

You either are the one trying to make the pass or you're the one getting passed on restarts. Everybody is full on knowing that that is the opportunity where they can grab a few spots because as soon as we run three or four corners and things single out, it's tough. You're not getting that spot or two back that you lost to a car that you were kicking its ass all day long.

You can be faster than this guy, but if he gets by you on a restart somehow, that can be problematic and difficult to fix. So that's one thing. Also, the brake failures. We had a lot of break failures that created cautions, that created restarts, that created opportunities for contact and wrecks.

So more break cautions, just cautions in general, produce more restarts. And I think those cautions and red flags then created more break failures. Yes, exactly. The other thing, too, and this is, this might be difficult for me to articulate,

these are some of the points that the drivers were given to me as reasons why they think the drivers were wild, the ones that I just mentioned, but also this one. So the chase format versus the elimination rounds. All right. Now, imagine, you know, when we go into the playoffs with elimination rounds, you got round one, right? And you got 16 drivers. Well, there's probably 12 of those guys thinking, if I just go out there and just have a normal day, I don't get eliminated.

I'm not trying to win the championship this round. I'm just trying not to be one of the guys that gets kicked out. somebody's going to break a motor somebody's going to have a break failure that's going to eliminate a couple of guys in that first round right away in that single race so if you just go out there mind your peas and cues don't fuck up

don't run into nothing don't bounce off nobody survive survive all right I had a driver tell me this in the first round of the playoffs he raced way more conservatively and he would also do that in the second round. If you're one of the top six guys or one of the top eight guys,

you're just trying not to fall into that bucket of two or three guys that are going to be eliminated. Because it's real easy to throw it away. It is. So you ran in round two or in the first half of the playoffs, guys were driving very conservatively, very smartly. In the chase that we have today, you're not afforded that opportunity. You have to start from the very beginning piling up points piling up results.

And a lot of guys start at such a deficit. They're having to throw the deep ball in race one, in race two. And you're seeing them, you know, send it into these corners, into these three and four wide situations because they got to get the points. They have to. Right. And if you miss out on stage points, if you're one of those guys that missed out on stage points early in the race,

now what? How are you going to claw yourself into this championship? When you're already now 10 to 20 points down to some of the guys in the field that got those stage points. And if you threw away them stage points, and then you get caught up in a wreck, it's like double. That's right. So we worried, I think. We had a comment or a couple conversations earlier in the season about this. We're seeing less cautions.

We're seeing less crashes. Our guy's not – is the win and you're in took away a little bit of the – a wild ambition, you know, and hell-raise, go for it, because wind gets me into the playoffs. Yeah. I don't know that I can answer the question in the regular season, but I can say now that it appears that the chase produces a bit more intense action, at least early. I know this definitely was an anomaly that we saw so much carnage and chaos in St. Louis. this is not what I think we're going to see in every week of racing every year in the chase.

But listening to drivers, they're like, look, man, if I was a top five or a top ten guy, I'm cruising in round one, just not f*** up, just cruising through, no mistakes, no big risks. And in round two, probably doing the same thing. Not no more. They can't afford it. I also wonder, like, even for the non-taste drivers, I forget, I think we tend to forget to, like, they're still racing for something. Like their owners are like,

17th is more valuable than 20th. So like they're still going to be aggressive back there. Josh Barry talked about that. He's sitting there 30th in points. They clawed their way up to 25th. And he said, man, we're going to 20th. We're trying to get to 20th because that's a big financial game for the company.

And, you know, now he's had this bad result at St. Louis. So he derailed that idea. But, you know, that tells you, yes, teams are sitting there in 20th in points going, we got a chance to finish 15th. Let's go do that. They set these, all the teams had these sort of individual goals of what they would love to accomplish in the remaining weeks of the season, whether they're in the playoffs or in the chase or not. Like even Sunday, I mean, we're leading the race with a good shot of win. We weren't really worried about any playoff or chase drivers.

We're trying to win. We're trying to win a race. Great, great. You knew you had an opportunity that day. 100%. You don't, like, you're going for the win. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty interesting.

So we talked about the Chase Standings. Who's, you know, let's discuss a little bit about who's in and who's not. Who's in trouble. Obviously, great weekend for Kyle Larson to be able to claw back from, started 55 points out of first place. Now he's nine. Christopher Bell was 50 points out. Now he's 18. It's crazy.

Do you just want to go down the list? I'll give you guys like 30 seconds each to decide if they're in or out? Yeah. I think we all assume that the top four are in, right? I think right now Larson, Bell, and Blaney. So, Blaney, you know, I was going to tell y'all, Blaney started the, I know he had to break failure, it was a shit day. Blaney started minus 25. And he's only minus 33.

So if you're a Blaney fan or if you're Ryan Blaney himself, you're sitting there going, look, I gave him two races. I basically am in the same spot as I started the chase. I'm just going to have to do this in eight races instead of 10. Could be way worse. It could. It could. So let's start with Tyler Redick. It sits 42 back.

TJ, you go first. I think Tyler Redick, to me, he's going the wrong direction right now. Started the year off really hot. Fading as of late. Just can't seem to really find any consistency of momentum. He's been fast, but this is where consistency pays off and you can't have the big mistakes. I agree. Tyler Redick isn't running like he did at the start of the season.

We all see that. Still 42 points out. after St. Louis, I think he's still involved and still got a shot at it, but he's going to, I mean, one weekend where he goes out and wins a race, he's probably sitting right on top of the points lead. Next driver, Ty Gibbs, 51 back. I think Ty's going in the right direction. He's quietly knocking off some good finishes. He's got another win in the books. I think he's confident. He's always been confident, and I think he's going to the right direction. You think he can still win it?

I think he can still win it. He said he's going in the right direction. I think he still win it. Let it live. Well, I just... Ty, going in the right direction, TJ. 40 points is where he started the playoffs or the chase, and now he's 51 out. Strong tracks coming up. Hey, it's my turn.

He's 40 points when he started the chase. Now he's 51. But we are going to Bristol, where he's been very strong. A great result this weekend, some stage points, a top three finish. And my guy, Ty Gibbs, is absolutely still going for the championship. Joey Lagano, also 51 back. I think Joey, I don't know if you can really ever count Joey out.

To me, he's the guy that just won't go away. And the worst thing for the field is to let Joey go and have a great Bristol and carry momentum. I know he's got some tough tracks after that, but giving Joey momentum just makes him more dangerous as this playoffs or chase goes on. Absolutely, T.J. Joey Lugano wasn't in the chase. He was not even in it. I didn't even think he was going to make it. No, bubble.

And so he's clawed his way not only into the chase, but he's sitting here. here in the top six, top seven, 51 points out. Joey Legato's trying to prove to the world that they didn't change the chase for him. And he can win it no matter how you line it up. Oh, Jesus. What the fuck? That's loud. It works.

I was right on the dock. You went over 20. How the fuck? What about TJ? He went over 20. He hasn't gone over yet. I've been way under. All right.

Chase Briscoe is 59 back. All right, Chase. Can we get a ding instead? Hey, this is my time. man um chase is just not consistent enough for me to to be a huge threat he can knock off a good run or two but just not consistent up for me i like you're so short he's so scared i like chase brisco 59 points out that's quite a big haul but if you can get a win again anybody that wins a race they're going to swing 35 40 points so i think chase brisco still alive carson hosevar 88 back yeah i just haven't seen enough speed lately all consistent

again, like this is all about consistent finishes and, and he's probably going to go running good or brist, so I feel like that's one of his better could be good there, but just in the long run, not as good. I think Carsonosvar overachieved this year, Spire overachieve this year with getting two cars into the playoffs. I think they're just trying to, you know, overachieve again, finishing anywhere in the top 10 and points overall is a good year for them. Bubba Wallace, who is 90 back.

I think Bubba can still knock off. He's going to have a good stretch of races coming up, I believe. But 90 back with the names that are in front of him, just a little much to overcome right now. Bubba Wallace, I think he's looking at trying to finish around fifth or sixth in the points at best. Again, TJ, you made a good point. A couple of good tracks coming up, maybe pop off a win or a couple of good results, and he just might be able to get up in there in the top six.

Chase Elliott, 93 back. 93 points is a lot, but I think Chase Elliott could he just can get hot, I believe, still. And he's one of the guys that I think can make a jump up from 11th. I think Chase can make a good run at it still. In the last 17 races since his last win, one top five finish, two top 10 finishes, an average finish of 19.5.

I'm worried about Chase. I don't know where the speed is in this car, but he's got a little bit of work ahead of him. All right. Is there any other driver that you want to bring up that you think has? I think we're good. I mean, if you want to cut it off right there, I'm fine with that. Yep.

Because we got Austin, Cendrick, Bush, Priest, Byron, all those guys over 100 points out. I think their season is over. I agree. A huge point day in Bristol, like win two stages and a win, maybe. I mean, we saw what that can do. I think those guys are, you know, just be challenging for them to even get to fifth. Fifth or sixth and points. I also think it's short term, too.

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You can use this promo code, download 26, at checkout. head over to linnell racing.com to lock in your favorite NASCAR moments into your collection today. All right, everybody. We're live on Ask Junior here. I get the chat up and I forget to turn it down, so I don't want to hear myself when this thing fires off, but it should be firing up any second. We got 43 waiting. Last week we had around 600 people, I think, in here.

But we're getting it cranked up here. We've had a great show. Cliff Daniels called in. winner winning crew chief from St. Louis. We talked a lot about breaks. I really enjoyed the conversation, like, learning about it, then also talking about sharing information. Fascinating.

I love it, too. We talked a lot about the chaos at St. Louis. Obviously, we talked about everything. Dirty Modo is badass this week as well. I think you're really going to like this show. This may be our best show of the year in terms of the Tuesday, Dirty Air and the Tuesday Dale Jr. I think I prepped and worked harder for this show

than I did any other show so I hope y'all might see a difference. TJ's here, Travis, Elijah, everybody. James is still here. With a fresh cut. Xfinity is waving the red flag on internet price hikes, raising the green flag for savings. Now you get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi

that you need locked in at one price for five years. There's no surprises and no late yellows. Right to Victory Lane, and that's how they love it. At Xfinity, imagine that. Xfinity. Imagine that. That's their slogan. We had the meets,

and then you have, imagine that. Can we talk about our new partner or no? No. We've got a new partner for the studio. Not yet. You're going to love this one. You're going to love this one.

I promise you. The new partner. I can't wait to talk about it. I've actually pretty bobbed. Yeah. So, all right, everybody's starting to trickle in. We've got about 200 people in here. Checking out the chat. Good morning. Mac Monday.

Pamela says she's here. Good to see everybody. I like the... It's a great weekend for the Denny Bros. Ohio State choked and Larson won the race. Yes. All right. Let's get right to it. So we'll just go kind of right down that one. Similar vein. Somebody want to know.

What is the correct response as a fan when another driver crashes their car? What if they are a serious threat to your bro's championship chance? All right, all right. This needs to be discussed and explained. So during the race, Ryan Blaney had break failure. There was a person that tweeted, a media member tweeted,

oh no, Blaney's in the wall, break failure. Travis retweeted that with F-U-C-K-Yes in all caps. And I said, Jerk move. I sent a gift that said, man, we don't really do that around here.

and it started to snowball from there. Travis doubled down, said, man, I'm just pulling from my driver, Travis. I'll let you kind of take it from there. So, yeah, how I can understand where people didn't like how it was just all caps that way. So like, maybe could I have I worded it differently? Yes. I will, yes, I will give you that.

But the, I think there's a bigger conversation on how fans react and celebrate. All right. situation. I don't have a problem with what you did. If that's a fan in the grandstands or another guy watching at home on his couch or a guy on his laptop or a guy with his buddies, whatever, however you're absorbing the race as a fan, if you want to have that type of reaction over a guy having an accident or somebody you don't pull for, I've sat in the grandstands and I've set, I will take myself and put myself in the suite at Charlotte Emergency Speedway as a teenager. I have watched fans do as much as they possibly could to the driver that they hated the most

every time he come by, right? Whether it was dad or anybody else, man, they would flipping birds and they were, you know, boy, when somebody crashed, they cheered like hell and they booed. And this, you know, when Darrell Waltrip got announced in the 80s when he's driving the Mountain Dew car, they booed the hell out of him. When Rusty wrecked Darrell, man, he caught hell for weeks, months. Yeah, very passionate. You know, and that, what you did, Travis, is absolutely acceptable and not a surprise to me.

But I'm just going to say, you're, I believe, in a different position than that person. You're not a fan. So this is where I will push, but I am not a media member. You are. But I'm not. I'm sorry, brother. You are. You're a podcast producer, but also you're a person.

That's dumb. You're a personality on this show. You are. You're a talking head on this show. Yeah, personality. You are. You're a media member. This is, hey, I'm sorry, dude.

You are. See, that's right. You are now under a new, you're in a new box. And you've got to act accordingly. You got to. We'll have Ryan Blaney come on this show. He might win the race and come on there next week. I don't need you doing that and him not want to call in or him want to call in and it'd be awkward.

Now, I will give you that. But there's a difference between being a media member and like, listen. Now, your reasoning there, I will, I will, I don't disagree with that. You do you, but I expect different. And I'm not, look, I am not your boss. Mike Davis is your boss. Well, you are my boss. But let me, we work on a level playing field.

We're in this room. We're all the same. But I just wish you would do it differently next time. I agree. And so if that happens again, you might say, that sucks for him. That's great for Denny. Right. Or damn, man, that's a tough blow for his hopes.

You've got to get super descriptive. But you can't go, oh, hell yeah. That's the wall. You know, I don't disagree with you on that. Yeah. Like, I understand the reaction. If I see that from a fan in the grandstands, who's there to, he bought his ticket, he's there to, he's having a good time.

That's sports. And I, and so I, but you're in a, in a position where you have, you have to like, understand, like, you can't do that. You're, you've become. You become more popular, whether there's a lot of people that don't agree with that. You have. You're more well-known. You're more, you have more notoriety.

You're more of a talking head on Denny's show that you ever were, right? You're growing this sort of reputation, whether you like it or not. And you have to make these adjustments. And so if you want Ryan Blaney not to want to come in here on Tuesday and knock your head off, right? Yes. You got to kind of, you know, know how to... You're on a personal level with these people now. You are, yeah.

I don't disagree with... You're not... You're in a personal level. The tweet... Didn't want to go hard at you. No, it's fine. And I, you mentioned that you want to talk about this. I said, let's have it on here so that, you know, I think the chat, you know...

So you can try to dig yourself out a little bit. The NBee says, quick, Travis, bring up Kyle Petty. That's hilarious. That's going to follow us. But I do have a question, so I don't disagree. that like I should have worded it differently. But Brandon says getting disciplined live on air is crazy. So Travis, what's the company that you work for?

I work for Durningmo Media. What's the last word? That is, I'm not a member of the media, though. You are. Yes, you are. So I have a question that for you, Dale. That's so dumb that you say that. All seriousness here, though.

Yeah. If you were in Ryan Blaney's shoes, and I tweet that about you, how do you think as a driver you would take that? If I was in Brian Blaney's shoes. Yeah. I'd be pissed. I'd be so mad. Yeah, agreed. I'd be mad, and then I'd also be mad at myself that I was mad.

Does that make sense? Because I'd be like, if this guy. Yeah. I'm going to go give him a piece of my mind. And then I'm going to be like, why am I so mad about this? He's just a producer on a podcast. I'm overreacting. Maybe Ryan will win this week.

I hope Ryan wins. I do, too. So he has to come on his show. And he wants to come in. And he wants to come in in person. Listen, the funny thing is, like, if it's not Denny, Ryan would probably be my driver. Ryan's, yeah.

Oh, wow. You're back in on that. He's from Ohio. He seems like a good, like a good time to do. Like, I've talked to him before. I've known, it's not like an anti-Ryan Blaney thing. It's that Ryan Blaney's really freaking good. Look, that you're, you know who I wasn't celebrating Rex?

Riley Herbs. Listen. But I agree. Next time it won't tweet that way. It just sounds bad. Looks bad. We're, all right, all right. People are saying we're going a little bit too hard, I think.

No, I know. All right. Well, listen, I think it's a fun conversation because what you did, I've seen it all my life. And I've, it's a very, what your reaction to that is absolutely an important ingredient in our sport for the fan. The fans need to have that passion. They need to have that love, hate. yes, no, you know, they need to have that very stern sort of line of guys they love and guys they really want to see have bad days.

You know, nobody, I don't, all the fans in the grandstands at St. Louis, I don't want them all up there going, man, I hope they all do well. You know, I want them to, like, hate some people and love some people. And we see that, we see that play out on the racetrack between drivers and all that. But I just think you being attached to this and, what you do with Denny and all the things, it's like, it's a bit more out there than you think. I think sometimes I feel like I'm reminded too when I get on social media and I say something and I go, oh shit, a lot more people read this than I remember or think. You know, I think I'm just

having this kind of general thought that I'm going to share with a couple hundred people. And then I'm reminded that it's quite a bit bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah. We had an incident. like that. Yeah. So. Next question. How's your fantasy football going?

How'd that draft go? So, AI's been a big topic of conversation in the world. At least that's what my algorithm has been sending me for whatever reason. I thought it would be fun. So chat, GPT. Is that right? I always get them three letters.

I call it Chad. I'm going to ask Chad. Another buddy of mine calls it Jack or something. That's a little weird. Yeah, it is. I'm going to talk to Chad, and I'm going to say,

I just thought it'd be fun. So let me just back up. The last couple of years, I ain't done no prep. I've sat down, drafting my team, no prep. I used to do prep, paper,

study, print out like top 200, all this crap. used to sit there, watch the draft, mark guys off and worry and worry about what I was going to do. And sometimes I'd win, sometimes I'd lose. It didn't really seem to make a difference. So I quit prepping. And so the last three years ain't done shit. And I've actually had less fun with my fantasy league.

Me and T.J. have been in this fantasy football league for 25 years, a long time, wouldn't you say? It's been a long time. Yeah. We've been in this thing forever. So we're going to do it, whether we're really loving it or not. And there's some years where it's more fun than others, and that's all right. But I was losing my, I was losing my love for it.

So I decided, you know what, I'm going to see what Chad thinks I should do. And I didn't listen. The funny part is, is that I asked Chad what he thought I should do, who he thought I should draft. And I would sit there and I'd take a picture of the board, you know, when it was my turn to draft, round two, round three, round four. All right, Chad, what you think? Here's the board.

And I never did anything Chad said. And so don't get me shit using AI to pick my team because I did absolutely the opposite of what. Because he would say something. And I go, I don't want that guy. You know, he's bored. And so I actually told Chad, I said, hey, man, I want you to help me draft like the breakouts. I don't want the tried and true.

I don't want the guy that's had three great years. I want to draft a full team of might have been or could be. And so most of my team are like second year players, third year guys, and they're all that, you know, on that breakout list. Except for my tight-in, I got the tight-in from Arizona. I had him last year. He was badass. And then I ended up getting my homes super late.

Nobody wanted my homes because he was coming off that injury. So I got him super late. He had a great night last night. great night. Yeah. But I think I got the running, I got a, I got that rookie wide receiver

from the Panthers. The rookie this year? He's a rookie last year. Tet. Oh. Troy. Tedroa. McMillan.

Yeah, no, he starts with, Tetaro and McDonald. Yeah. That's right. Whatever it is. Yeah. I got guy,

all my team is guys like him. Like, man, might have a good year. We'll just have to see. How did the length of the draft go? Oh, it wasn't bad. the length. It's like 45 minutes maybe make a change to it. We had, I think we, I fucked up and started the draft and it was like on a minute and 30 seconds.

And so we got to like round 10 and I didn't tell anybody, but I just shortened it to like 30 seconds. I was like, screw this. Yeah, I might not even run 10. And I think the first two guys weren't ready for that. And they didn't get the pick in that round because it went by some fast and they weren't paying attention. I'm like, oops, sorry about that. But that was funny. That's pretty messed up.

I'm the commissioner. It's good, though. I mean, yeah, but you just got to give me a heads up. Look, we've been doing this for 25 years, people. You'll know.

You may be ready for anything. You're fine. At that point, you're fine. Yeah. All the guys that are in this pretty much have been with us from the start. Yeah,

they know when shit, they were ready for shit like that to happen. We had to kick one guy out. But he auto-drafted every year. He moved to Ireland. Yeah. Yeah. TJ, somebody in the chat.

He moved to Europe. You're out. Yeah, that's true. That's pretty messed up. Well, he auto-drafted because he's never late. That's fine if you auto draft, but you say he moved to Europe.

Well, that was why he auto-drafts it. T.J., someone in the chat wants to know, do you have any plans to go to the new Bill stadium? At some point, yeah, I'd love to go. This is really not excited when I saw the Bristol,

the schedule for the season, the NFL when it came out, lined up perfectly with their first home game. So Thursday night, I'll be spotting the truck race during the home opener for the bills. But at some point, I'd like to go up there and check it out.

It looks awesome. I can't wait to go see it. Yeah. Will Dale Jeter run an Xfinity race anytime soon? No plans. I did love when I watched the O'Reilly race. It says Xfinity. O'Reilly race, when I watched the O'Reilly race,

I loved how much off throttle they had. Almost text Denny Hamlin during the race and said, wow, the off throttle, because he loves all throttle. They would lift and be out of the gas for so long around the corner. It was badass. That kind of made me want to be out there. Somebody in the chat wants to know, what do you think of Carson Hosefard getting the fans out on the track to just sign autographs afterwards? I was great. Do it every week. I love it. Yeah, same. Look, I don't think it's performative. You know, I think I learned in San Diego that it's not performative because he, we were so late and he said, I'll still show up and then stayed and signed autographs. Like, that's just who he is. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. Do you think that's something that's true? I like that he took a week off from, you know, being in the middle of some shit.

sign that says like weeks since Carson Osavar was in a wreck and just put in the studio and started a wreck let's just say not in a wreck. March safe yes Mark safe will I do the 24 hours of Daytona now I saw fans say they're

playing NASCAR 26 Jerky Boys as they're sponsored on the car. Jerky Boys is a sponsor in NASCAR 26 NASCAR 26 man you should spot the 24 hour race with me one year we should go do that race together I got some codes Should I put a code in the chat?

I got some codes too Should I put some codes in the chat? Well, we got to find a way for them to like Because you just put it Someone's going to like Well first one that types it in I mean that's how it goes Yeah first come for you got to be here present right

Yeah somebody's going to type it in and get it Okay I'm all do it let me just give me a second Y'all you'll keep talking Um Somebody on I think it was on Twitter Want to know that they're going to Bristol for the first time This weekend TJ What's some non-racing things are like what's

Around Bristol? Yeah Bass Pro Shops. Oh, I can't. Here, I'm going to give it to do, I'm not going to put it in the chat because I don't want people to know who I am. Yeah. Send it to Travis.

I'm going to get it, y'all. All right. All right. I'm going to go sign up for it real fast. Let's text it. That's a PlayStation. Oh, I got PlayStation. And then here comes the Xbox.

Dale, somebody wants to know what's, uh, one of the songs that you're really happy about. That's on the, um, check that out. What do you? Oh, there it is. That's nice, ain't it? Chat. I love it. Yeah.

What's your, what's your, one of your songs that you're, one of your favorite songs on the NASCAR 26 soundtrack. Oh, man, let me,

oh man, all right, one of my favorite songs, there's a song called Dale Earnhardt. Really? Hot skillet, Liquors,

I think is the name of the band. Hot skillet liquors. Yeah. Yeah. It is, dude, so let me tell y'all, I couldn't help it.

There's, every year, somebody sends me a Deller and Heart song. Man, my buddy wrote a Deller and Heart song, or this guy's making a Deller and Hart song. Or, you know, every year there's a Dailen Hart song, and I'll be honest, man, not all of them are that great. It's hard to write about him,

and they're all, you know, mostly sad, or, oh, man, you know, Dail Earnhardt. So this song is not sad. This song is talking about how badass he is, and it's just funny. I think it's a funny song. And so I was kind of thinking that this might be the last time

that I get to curate the music for this game. And I take a ton of shit for it because a lot of people do not like it. You're not going to make everybody happy. But in this case, like when you make a soundtrack for a video game, you make a lot of people unhappy. And so I was like, you know,

I'm just going to put this song in there. I don't care what anybody says. So if you get a chance to listen to it. It's pretty funny. The band's not together anymore, but they were thrilled. I'd heard back that they were thrilled that we considered and put them in there. I put Tim Dugger

in there. Last year, we didn't put Tim in, and everybody said, damn, I'm surprised he didn't put Tim in there, his buddy. So this year, I was like, oh, all right. What song? Your ass, you're going to get some Tim Dugger next year. So put Tim in there. What song, do you know? Mama

tried. He does Mama tried. He does. tried. It's pretty good. Let me see here. I'm going to say a lot of songs, and these are the ones that I put in there. I didn't choose every song. I only chose about half the songs. All the same by Sick Puppies. Badass song. Badass song. Great to Tia. NBC was using him this week, and I want to say that song. I feel like you're the first one, though. It came back. He puts this song out, and you're like, this new. That's 2000s rap. Sounds like, it could be old, but I've never heard it.

And it turns out T.I. Steel has it. The Hot Skilet Liquors. Del Earnhardt, great song. What It Is the Burn by Finch, badass song. Tim Dugger Mama tried. Angels and Airwaves Tunnel. Amazing record. Every song on that is the best.

Angels and Airwaves is as good as Blink. I know a lot of people won't agree with that. Citizen Cope, Sun's gonna rise. Citizen Cope, good friend of mine, been listening to his music for 20 years. Just a great song. Stephen Wilson, Jr., he's a badass now,

but I heard Year to Be Young, 1994, years ago. Tim Dugger sent me that song, said, listen to this, I think you'll like it. Never had heard Stephen Wilson, Jr. before, and he was, no one knew who he was. No, yeah. And Tim sent me that song. Speaking of Stephen,

And somebody asked early in the chat, have you heard Corner Man? I think it's one of her newer songs. DMX, where to hood at? Oh, we put that in there. That's DMX. Reasons by Alien and Ant Farm. Aalien Ampharm, dude,

I was a massive fan of theirs back in the day. Yeah. I always kind of go back and look at the bands that I loved 20 years ago to see if they're making new music. And they were. Alien Ant Farm put out, Alien Ant Farm put out reasons this year. I was like, this is a pretty good song.

I bet other people will like this song. And then I didn't choose this one. Steve Myers did, but I love it. Soul coughing, Super Bon Bon, just a bad ad song. Move upside, let the man go through is a great line. You could talk about, you know, how that's a great line in racing. I'll tell you a little bit of a hint about Sweet Home Alabama. Yes, Sweet Home Alabama has been used in other games.

We thought that would be a good intro for the game. and without getting into details, we had a budget. You got to be able to fit all these songs in that budget. People were like, oh, man, look at this playlist. I could do better than that. And they'd go out on social media and be like, here's my playlist. Look at my, I could do better.

Not doable. Look how I did better. And I'm like, yeah, that's going to cost you about $3 million. And so we don't have $3 million. And so we had to kind of fit all of this. And we had to throw songs that we wanted. that we, you know, badass songs that a lot of people love, we had to throw some of them out because they weren't going to fit.

But Leonard Skinnerd was going to be the most expensive song. But you know what they said? They said, you pay us what the second most expensive song is. Whatever that number is is what you pay us, which I thought was really nice. That's nice. They could have said, you know, we want $100,000. But now they said, just pay us as much as you're paying the next guy.

That's cool. And you go to the second guy and say, we'll pay you whatever the third guy pays. Yeah, that'd be nice. it all down. All the other songs, other people had influence and put them in. They're great songs. But those are the ones that I chose. Did you guys post the code yet?

Elijah, did you post the code? Why is the code not out? Elijah. We promised the code. No, you're putting it in the chat. Yeah, man, following directions. Sorry for yelling. I thought you, I thought we were all.

Of all people. Everybody, director hate towards Elijah, no longer Travis. Was it just me? Was it just me? Or did everybody else think we were talking about putting it in the chat here? I thought we were pacing it in chat. The chat definitely thought it was going in the chat. Yeah.

Okay, good. This is for people that are here. Which one are you doing first? All right. Here comes the PlayStation. Be ready. While we're, Elijah sucks. Let's get that going.

Hashtag Elijah sucks. Travis sucks. No, Travis is great now. Yeah. David Elijah, you're fired too. It's out. That's a PlayStation code, folks. That's PlayStation.

You need to put like what system it is behind it. So, you know. There's your PlayStation code. I think they can tell the difference. Yeah, they are because I think... The PlayStation codes are much shorter. Here comes your Xbox code. Dawson, Travis, still doesn't suck.

He's good now. Oh, Dawson. Here comes your Xbox code for NASCAR 26. Everyone's fire. There it is. The codes are out. Somebody's copy and paste. Man, what a great show.

Copy and paste. What a great show. Next question. Do you think the field messed up this past week and not gaining more ground on Denny Hamlin? Not really. When I look at the points. Three drivers made up points.

Yeah. Listen, Larson gained 40. Ligano 21. Geez, Ligano. He's going to get in the middle of this. And Hosevar gained one point. The guys that lost Christopher Bell 6

Blaney 17 Boy, he's so lucky having the break failure And only losing 17 points Super lucky Chase got hurt His point system Yeah, I mean These guys didn't lose giant chunks

It's still early I know, you know I'm sitting there If I leave that racetrack And I'm anybody but Denny I go man Denny didn't run so damn good What's going on?

Yeah, you guys picked him too Right? You know it's kind of been this bit of a lull where we haven't really seen that dominance. And I know we're not, you know, he may turn it around at Bristol. He may go to the Kansas, the Charlottes, all those tracks and get going because Toyota's been badass at the big mile and a halfs. I can't wait to go there because we don't know if the adjustments NASCAR made to the front

structure back in North Woodsboro is going to affect the Toyota's at the mile and a half yet. We haven't been to really one of those tracks to see. Darlington would be probably the closest thing, but I wouldn't count Darlington on a, you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, what you do at Darlington and the, you know what I'm trying to say there. Yeah, yeah.

That's the one thing is you're like, man, I had a bad day break or whatever, but it's like, but Denny didn't go crush it. They got lucky. Another bad pit stop. That's back-to-back weeks. I, look, I'm not pulling against Denny at all, but I do want this to be close.

Yeah, you want to go to homeset with two or three drivers. I want it to be a battle all the way to the end. Yeah, I get that. Except for the New O'Reilly series. like that one does not be close. Justin and Carson, everyone else, well, Sammy and Raj, and then everyone else just get out of here.

Sorry, I don't know your name, but someone want to know, what do you think of the shoving match at the Cars tour? We'd rather people not put their hands on each other, you know, no matter what. I said it, you know, back when Huffman was gotten that little deal at Anderson,

I don't mind guys talking to guys, I don't mind cussing, I don't mind going to talk to each other, getting mad and putting your finger in everybody's face or whatever you want to do, but you can't touch people. You can't put your hands on people. The guy that pushed, that, really, I'm not mad that the guy pushed the guy. It was kind of a jerk move, but it just could escalate.

What could happen beyond that is the problem. Say a guy, say he pushes the guy, then somebody sucker punches him or hits him. There's been stories in racing lull in history. where guys have been hit by wrenches, jack handles, people lose their fines. And so, you know, you're, you don't think, you think you're there and you don't think about the world's watching. You don't think about the repercussions that come with it. In the moment.

You see a guy get pushed and you're mad. You go up and punch somebody in the back of the head or hit somebody with something. It's a big, bad deal then. And that's what we're trying to avoid. everything that happened at Tri-County, there will be no penalties for nothing that happened off track or on track.

That's my expectation. We're not even close to having penalties for anything that happened there. I do like the drama. I love everything I saw on the racetrack, pushing and shoving. Nobody got wrecked. Nobody got dumped.

But the shoving physically off the racetrack is bad because of what it could turn into. Could have turned that figure eight race. Did you see that? That's what somebody did. Holy cow. two guys got into it and like another guy a guy was getting out of the car.

At a figure eight race? A guy was getting out of his red car. Yeah, like a real figure eight race? Yeah, like a real, like cars are awesome looking. Oh yeah. The guy's getting out of his car. Another guy runs up and hits the car when he's getting out. Oh, he's getting out. Oh, shit.

Yeah. Not good. And then he jumped in the car and was kicking the guy. Yeah. Oh, another thing. We see somebody here. Dale, how much do you owe to the swear jar? I think it's, I think it's Tammy.

I'm not sure. But, but I saw, So this swear jar thing come out, right? NASCAR's going to do this swear jar. And I'm like, what the hell is this? You were uninterested at first. What are they doing? But now I see.

They got this list. All right, here's how many F bombs, GDs and all this stuff and MFers and all that. And I'm like, all right, that's interesting. Okay. Now, but what it's got me wanting to know is who said what. I know. That's what I thought. I'm like, who is saying he says.

I don't, you know, I don't really need what I would love. All right, this is what I want. NASCAR, give me this. Give us this. Put the chat back up there. I was going to try to search that how many times he cussed. No, no.

I want to see the chat. So this is what, I'm looking at the chat like I'm actually looking at the faces of all these people. I know. So what I want to see, and I think what you would love to see, is I need that list to be, this driver has cursed more than this driver.

Here's the leading cursor. second, third, fourth, and beside the driver's name, what is the curse word that he uses the most? Yes. That would be awesome. Can we get that?

I mean, they're literally talking about it in the radio about the swear jar. Yeah. Like it's... The drivers are aware. I want to know who the leading driver is and I want to know what his favorite word is. Surely they have that.

Because then we can then turn that into content. Surely they got it. Yeah. Yeah. I will say this. Driver, t-shirts could come out with them. When I, I will say this, I would love to poll.

Let's go back to like 1995. All the drivers that started cup races, all the drivers that finished in the top 30 in 1995, all right? I bet if you polled all of them, they would tell you that Rusty Wallace was the biggest cusser. Because I would stand with Dad and Rusty, and I'd be at the racetrack when I was a kid, and Rusty and Dad were talking.

just normal Saturday morning Hey man How's it going What you've been up to And every Sentence had an F bomb in it With Rusty

I don't know what he's like these days But God He dropped the F word A lot I thought it was awesome Somebody said Oh yeah TrueX and Kurt Busher

Still cussing in the retirement Yeah TrueX was a little bit of custer Kurt Yeah. Kurt's got some social media, YouTube videos. Also, crew chiefs and spotters, I think,

count towards the sword jar. TJ. I don't cuss a lot on the radio. Hear me out. Wait, crew chiefs and spotters are counting toward this? Yes. I don't think that should have.

You're getting the spotters way too much. That spotters don't need to. I agree with you, but, TJ. I mean, they might as well have Can we start having you kiss more? They might as well have podcast hosts.

Yeah, put the media members Your swearage R today would be I know It's up there They don't need to have the spotters I don't think I don't even know if the crew chief should be in there Just drivers

Just drivers I don't care about Those are the stars of the show I agree But TJ can we What? Have you cuss more to up the number? No I'm not cussing out I try to defuse

De-escalate situations I had to do a little bit of that on Sunday Giving out some football scores too I did yeah Then we used to use code words Now we just football scores Oh, yeah, we did. Yeah.

Not for tires. We didn't use code words for tires. Just football games. Yeah. Because that'd be silly. Don't y'all think that's dumb? Code words? Yeah.

I think it's so... I get maybe at the end of the race. But for the most part, like, they were kind of important. It was a good mix on this weekend, just so you know. That's silly. Yeah, well, teach their own. I love it when the code word fuck them up and they do something. wrong because they forget what the code word means.

The 11 team. I love that. Yeah. Somebody said I wish TJ would curse an eye racing when he's spotting for me. Steve Myers can fix that. I bet there is an eye racing. Yeah, there's a spotter pack. It's just all cussing.

It would be great. I did, I know I've shared this before, but I'll share it again. I did a voice for Ways. Oh yeah. Yeah. And yeah. There's some color in there.

I posted it on I tweeted it I tweeted it the link to do it and some people got it but I don't think other people have to give it to try anything else I don't know man I think we're in a good spot

yeah TJ is vanilla yeah no he's not not on on the radio I am gasoline that's the that's the that's the that's the gist

of social media TJ's Vanilla in the next post is TJ is the fire to gasoline. Yeah. It's not my job to be gasoline on the radio. Is Amy racing in the M-Pri? I don't know. Well, um...

Is Amy going to let you play some more hell let loose? Do I need to make another hall pass? I'm busy this week, but maybe this weekend. All right, everybody, that was a lot of fun. I've got a couple more codes. I will give those codes. Maybe next week in the chat. Yeah, I've got some too.

You'll be next week. I say save it for the next week in the chat. We'll save the codes for next week. More codes, PlayStation and Xbox next week in the chat. Also, next week we're going to go live at a specific time. Travis, what time we're going to go live? 10.30. 1030.

Be ready. We will be going live on Ask Junior. Set your clocks. Give yourself a notification so you don't miss out. This has been a lot of fun. 775 people in here. Xfinity, we got to thank Xfinity because They're doing all these great things for us and sponsoring this segment every single week.

They're waving the red flag on Internet price hikes, raising the green flag for savings. You get the speed and reliable Wi-Fi that you need, one price five years. They're just straight badass. Xfinity, imagine that. Hey, this is Dellenhart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. download gear, including the Imo drink some beer t-shirt we've been talking about here around the office, head over to shop.dardimomedia.com for all the latest merch. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

Place your bets. All right, it's time for Dirtymo Doe. This segment is brought to you by Fanduil. We are back. Dirty Mo Media just acquired or teamed up or have become partners with an entity in the college football realm. of podcasting, and we're excited about that.

So you're going to see a lot more of that on our feeds. We're going to talk a little bit more about that as well. But first off, we're headed to Bristol. This feels like a big race for title contenders. Every race is a big race for title contenders. Russ, you're back. You weren't here last week. We missed you.

But we're ready. We're dialed in and ready to go over some of the comments between all of us in terms of who we think's going to win. So obviously, coming out of the gate, I'm going to tell you that I think, Arson is the favorite. He's won three races in the last, I think, seven or last eight. He's got seven top fives. The one that he didn't get the top five in, he got crashed out of. That was this race last year. But I mean, the guy's just automatic. This is one week where I don't think I'm picking

Denny Hamlin as the favorite. What does the predictor say? The predictor agrees with you. Kyle Larson is going to go back to back, says the predictor. Vegas agrees with you, too. The lines now out. All right. Well, Larson is on a hot streak right coming off of the win. He wasn't the best car at St. Louis, but they got the job done. He could go into Bristol, be the best car, have a great several stages, and maybe possibly win the race, and put, you know, put Denny Hamlin in a bit of a bind as they

head to the mile and a halfs where Denny will have to perform. Who else stands out? I think you got Denny Hamlin Yeah, can't ignore Denny Hamlin Of course there But also Christopher Bell I like Christopher Bell there Won this race last year

He's also been top 10 and six of the last seven there Yeah Blaney even though he's never won there He's been top six the last four races there You got Ty Gibbs is a sleeper I That's yes he won in the spring there I think we just don't think of Ty Gibbs

You know we just don't think of Ty Gibbs You know, we just don't think of Ty Gibbs. I feel like this happened somewhere else. We don't or you don't, Russ. I think the general we, the general we. Ty Gibbs, that just went out there and won earlier this year is a sleeper. I mean, you've got, you know, zero respect. Let me say, you've got guys that are hot.

This is the information that I get from racing insights. You got a couple of drivers that are hot. That's Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson. Then you got guys that are strong recently at Bristol. Christopher Bell. You got Brian Blaney will be a factor. You got Chase Briscoe consistently

lately at Bristol. You got solid at Bristol. You give Carson Hosevar a solid at Bristol and you give the winner. You give the winner

from the race earlier this year a sleeper label. I would flip those two. Yeah, that is not good. But so that's a sleeper pick to win. All right. It should say to sleeper to win, not sleep or sleep. All right.

Change is coming next week again for Dale Jr. You know what? Respect zero. We're going to be working on racing insights to the end of time. It's a work of progress. It's like a painting. It's never done. Not even any mention about how, you know, getting beat on a resource last year.

That's the only way C-Bell 1. I mean, dang, not even a mission. When you come to my visitation, I hope you lay down the most recent, iteration of the notes in my casket. This is Dale's last work. All these changes. I'll make sure. Dale's a sleeper.

I'll come in there. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. I'll come in there like Kenny Powers. Don't bury him yet, holding the boom box and everything. So every week I can, every change you've asked for. Every week I complain about something with the notes for no damn good reason.

And Russell changes it. So a couple of drivers stay away from Austin Cendrick's cold. Daniel Suarez is also cold. Use caution with Joey Lugano. And I agree. Joey, his average results here, average running position, all that, not very good.

But I just got a feeling that they are funny about strategy and things and figure out ways to sort of get that track position needed. He might be a 15th, 20th place car, but that result

in this time of the year, they're just, they're good. They're figuring out how to throw him his ass up the top 10 and get an eighth or a ninth place finish. I always feel like Joey and Paul Wolf are scary when they're like 18th because that's when Paul Wolf can get creative with some things and you never know what's going to happen.

Yeah, I feel like they excel in them times. Like they just find the little bit. Russ, what do you think of Chase Elliott, a driver that needs to have a good performance? He's lost his Bristol touch, right, Dale? Is that what we'd like to say? He's finished 15th or worse in the last three of Bristol. You know, he was eight or better. He's lost that Bristol feeling. Yes. Whoa.

In the prior four. So, but, you know, he's, he's just struggled recently, too. Like, I just feel like this team is. I have. I need to see something else from this team lately before. I think they're going to rebound. Yep. Yeah, I heard you talk about that.

I think they're rebounding. Okay. Well, we'll see. The results from last spring, Ty Gibbs, won the race. Blaney was second, Larson 3rd. I definitely think that could absolutely... That could absolutely, again, be the

top three. Tyler Redick, who doesn't have an amazing, you know, it's not his best track is what you have him labeled as, did get a fourth place finish. Briscoe was fifth. Ligano, like I said,

seventh place. I've got so if I scroll down here, we're going to go over matchups, But when I look at top ten parleyes, I want to do those. Top ten parleyes, I think you bet Gibbs and you bet Larson on single all-out wins. See if you can make a little money on Gibbs or get the automatic win from Larson, whatever you want to do. Top tens at Bristol. I got two parlays for you.

I'm going to go Briscoe Hosevar. Risco and plus 246 and then Legano Blaney Legano plus 102 Yeah I like those two parleyes for top tens Mine was going to be

Blaney, Bell, and Hamlin Plus 119. I just think that this is going to be like a heavy weight Like those drivers at the top are going to be all right there Hey, this is absolutely the time of year where you know the chase guys

I know St. Louis aside, gateway aside, the chase guys all run up front in the chase. In the playoffs, in the, they all, you look at the rundown at any racetrack, and it's all chase drivers in the top 12. So I think that's a brilliant way to look at it. You might not stack three or four drivers in a parlay for top tens earlier in the year,

but when the chase rolls around, pick those chase guys if you want, and pile them in there. I'm going to go with Alex Bowman and Brad. No shit. That's out there. I mean, is that crazy? They both run good there. That's crazy, man.

That's crazy. I like it. I like it. It's crazy. I like it, T-J. That's plus $4.73. They're both plus money. I mean, does Alex run good at Bristol?

Does Alex run good at Bristol? You need to. We need to write that one down. Yes. Does Alex run good at Bristol? I mean, yeah, there you go. A-L-E-X. he's not wrong he's not wrong yeah good who did you have been good year in the in the night race i went

i went hamlin blaney bell both coming off little momentum as well so just makes everything flow a little easier with qualifying all right i got him pick all right um we got a couple of we got four matchups for you larsson and bell i'm going larsen he's got two stage wins earlier in the year there and confidence coming off of last weekend. And for the record, we actually have numbers out on this Larson's minus 175. So it is a heavy juice if you're going to bet it. Gibbs. Gibbs, this is a close one, though.

I think these drivers are going to finish one spot apart. Could go either way. Yeah, Gibbs has got to have the edge here. He's probably really excited. I know how it is. I'm a favorite at minus 120. Everybody knows I'm a big Blaney fan. But I got to be real.

I think Gibbs, I just feel like Gibbs is going to, going to, it's going to be like, Gibbs second, Blaney third, Gibbs fourth, Blaney fifth. You know, it's going to be right there. Yeah, I think so. Denny Hamlin, Joe Lugano, this one's relatively easy. I'm going to go to Hamlin. Joey will not match Denny's pace in the race, but he will gut out a top 10 finish as my prediction. Same.

Three to six spots behind the number 11. Denny's heavy favorite minus 200. So I would say on the betting side, unless you're parlaying this was something, I wouldn't bet it straight up. Don't bet it. Then you got Bussure and Priest. Priest has some swagger. It could go either way, but I like the confidence in the media that I've seen from Ryan lately. He's having a lot of fun.

Yeah. Priest underdog plus 140. I love it. Hey, what was his? Yeah, he was, let's see, in the spring. Russ, what do the numbers say between? Dale got, Dale now has all the numbers right, too. So the numbers agree with all of Dale's picks.

Oh, nice. Priest was eighth in the spring. Busher 13th. You're telling me the number say Priests? Yeah, I'm betting that right now. Busher's been outside the top 10 in the last four, I think, here at Bristol. Yeah, Busher in the next-gen car

in the seven races we've ran at Bristol, Busher has the better average finish than Priest's by three positions. But among the chase drivers in overall starts. So Priest has 11 and Busher has 19. Priest has the edge by three positions.

So it's really, really tight. It is. I'm giving it to Priest now because it seems like his performance this year has just been better. And he seems... Yeah, that's the other part. He seems charged.

He seems like... This is starting to make sense to me. Yeah, I mean, he gutted out a solid finish last week, too. I mean, just kind of like what... And I know Busher had to break his shoes, but I'm not hearing and seeing a lot of Busher lately, right? It doesn't give me tons of confidence to go out there and put the bed on him. Bristol is the place to he could turn it, though.

Dude, all these are tight. They wouldn't be matchups if they weren't, except for the Hamlin Legano. That's a little weird. That was a strange one. Yeah. You want to, you know, hell Mary that might not work out, put a little money on Joey to beat Hamlin in the matchup.

I like putting some of those out there just to like... I do too. Because if you're a Ligano fan or you just want to have a little fun and let's just see if there's an upside. Yeah, one or two bucks. Maybe this race turns into a little bit of a chaotic race. People get a little aggressive. All right. We're going to move on to our football college parlay.

I put together a couple of ideas. And I'll let you all guys. Russ, if you try to steal mine, I will come find you. I'll go punch you. I text him in Latar to bet that I like you. I'm taking it. I want the Miami game. Travis, how would you like to?

How would you like to proceed? Who do you want to go first? I'm going first and give me Miami minus 20 and a half versus Wake Forest. Miami scored 45 and 77 this year. They're sending a message. Meanwhile, Wake gave up 36 to Purdue last week. They're just not good. They're not.

And this is like, this is really the first, this is really kind of, wouldn't you say that like the NIL and team's ability to sort of utilize that system? it's really starting to take more of an effect like settling in this year. Oh, I'd say we're in full swing now. Full swing. Last year was kind of like, yeah, like Ohio State was 24 is like the first year. A lot of teams were like,

I'd have done this differently, that differently, this differently. This is really the roster of all these teams in full swing. Yeah. Ohio State lost. And Miami was on the NIL program well before anybody else. They got a bit of a head start

on really how this works. So they should be doing it better than anyone else at this point. They were beta testers of the program. They were beta testers. So yeah, that's my number, minus 115. I love it. Who wants to go next? Russell, go ahead.

So I'm rooting for a lot of points in the LSU and Ole Miss game. I'm going with the over 58 and a half. Yeah, all right. Although I did have Miami earlier today. and Travis cursed me out. You never had it. I think there's a big game down the road here. I think UNC's at Clemson, right?

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm picking that one as well. Yeah, that's a tough place to go in and play, but I'm just going straight up UNC to win that game. I was, I'm pulling for Carolina, both North and South Carolina.

I want Carolina beat Clemson, but I honestly think getting Clemson at minus 172 is hard to pass up. Carolina's recent play has driven the odds in a good spot for folks on that side to try to bet Clemson to win. But I don't think that a lot of people give you and see a chance to win this game. But the odds would say it's pretty tight. So wait, who are you taking? South Carolina over Mississippi State at minus 184.

It's a home game for South Carolina. They got a veteran QB started the year strong. Mississippi State started the year strong as well, but they got a freshman. I think it's a close game, but South Carolina wins it out. My bet is going to be Mississippi State at plus three and a half, parlay with UNC at plus three and a half. All righty then. I'm trying to say I want both my teams that I like to win,

North and South Carolina, but I'm going to bet more responsibly, not for them to win outright, but for them to kind of cover this spread. Say your picks again? Mississippi State plus three and a half. UNC at plus three and a half. I can get you plus four. Even better for you.

Yeah. I'm trying to build this for us then. Well, but for our part, for our sake though, for our parlay, we're going to take unc just straight up. That's T.J's pick. Let's do it. They always say don't bet with your heart. All right. So we'll take the points.

I'm not a UNC fan. We'll take the points then. How about that? Can we take the points at plus three and a half? I don't get to do Mississippi State plus three and a half? You know, I have them at plus four. Okay. And then SEC, you said which game, Russ?

Oh, you're taking the over. One dollar would win you $12 and $75. Nice. Let's go. My kind of bet right there. We get a meat in three box. Hell yeah. I also, Georgia, 25 and a half against Arkansas.

Arkansas is really, really bad. All right, man. Well, all right, great dirty mode. segment brought to you by FanDuel. Thank you, Russell, for coming in here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you, buddy. Yes, sir. Yeah, after that. The notes this week were awesome. I love that we're going to be celebrating Denny Hamlin's 750th start this weekend. That's a big milestone. Great job. Great job sticking that in there. What are you going to do, Travis? Send 750 tweets. Well, I can now.

Dirty Modo brought to you by FanDuel, the premier gaming destination in the United States. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us here in the RB's Don't forget about Arby's new meat in three box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. We have the meats. We had a great show for you today. Thank y'all for tuning in. We'll see you tomorrow.

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